Thursday, July 24, 2008

"Ich Bin Ein Beginner!"

The Barack Hussein Obama World Tour made its next stop today, in Germany where Obama,obviously looking to soak up some of John F. Kennedy's mojo made what was billed as a major speech.

What it was, in fact was a syrupy morass of the most basic platitudes.

As Ace pointed out, you could take lines from "We Are The World" and Obama's vapid nonsense and interchange them without anyone noticing.

What I found most interesting about all this was one line in the speech where Obama referred to himself as 'a citizen of the world', the setting, and a little something that happened away from the cameras that was quite revealing.

First of all, the setting.Originally, the Chosen One wanted to speak at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, a conceit that would roughly be equivalent to a German politician giving a speech at the Washington Monument. The Germans politely persuaded Obama that the Gate might not work so well, so Team Obama steered the candidate to an even more questionable site, the Victory Column in Berlin.

Interesting place, that column. The 226-foot (69-meter) column was built to commemorate Prussia's victories over Denmark, Austria and France, with Kaiser Wilhelm I doing the honors at its inauguration in 1873.Originally,it stood in front of the Reichstag, Germany's parliament building until Hitler had it moved to its current location in the middle of Berlin's Tiergarten park, where Ol' Adolf and the Boys used it as a location to whip howling mobs of Good Germans into a bloodthirsty frenzy.

There was some talk about taking it down after World War Two,but apparently the Germans thought it might come in useful for festive occasions like this one, so it stayed up.

Either Barack Obama is ignorant of what a place like this symbolizes or he simply is too sucked up into the vortex of his own ego to care.

Of course, if Obama really wanted a shot at the impact of a Kennedy or a Reagan, he would have made a speech in Mecca, assuming they would allow him in as an apostate Muslim. But apparently Obama felt that the spectacle of him addressing a bunch of screaming Germans in Hitler's old stomping grounds would be less upsetting to Americans than the spectacle of him addressing a bunch of screaming Muslims..with no moving them out of camera range allowed this time.

Oddly enough, this is the second time on this tour that Obama has shown himself to be either ignorant or uncaring of anything but his own photo ops and aggrandizement....campaign posters by his small band of supporters in Israel at the Kotel in Jerusalem was a mark of sacrilege and disrespect, especially since Obama could have easily had his people move them out if he had any sense of what the place means..or cared. As it was, a number of Israelis who were present apparently let Obama know in no uncertain terms what they thought of this, although that little item didn't make the dinosaur media. Israelis are like that - it's a small country, people mostly know one another and they're still used to going up to politicians in public and letting them know what's on their minds...which is why Ehud Olmert hasn't been to Sderot lately.

The last item of interest that occurred away from the spotlight involved US troops stationed at Ramstein Air Base or Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where a lot of our wounded from Iraq are treated. Obama apparently felt he was too busy to drop in and visit them, giving the lame excuse that his campaign was funding this part of his trip and he didn't feel it was proper, as opposed to his photo-ops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You have to wonder about this.

Obviously, the excuse given by Obama's campaign is a lame one. Obama is, after all, a sitting Senator and one would think that an opportunity to visit with some of the guardians of our freedoms, particularly those wounded in the line of duty would be appealing any time regardless..unless, perhaps, Obama wasn't too sure of the kind of welcome he would receive from them.

His attempts to sabotage their mission are pretty well known, a few wounded vets getting in his face about it might not have looked good on the evening news, and the campaign probably figured there was no real reason to chance it.. At least, that's my guess.

Next stop for the World Tour, Britain. I'm sure they'll just love him there.